The Home of Mankind

by Hendrik Willem van Loon

  And this brings us to a consideration of modern Italy. For Italy, unlike Greece, does not merely have its future behind it. It works intelligently and courageously towards a new goal, and if it keeps long hours, it does so to undo the damage of a thousand years of neglect and once more regain its ancient and honourable status among the ranking nations of the earth.

  In the year 1870 Italy once more became a united nation, and as soon as the struggle for independence was over and the foreign rulers had been driven back across the Alps (where they belonged) the Italians started upon the gigantic and well-nigh hopeless task of putting their long-neglected house in order.

  First she turned her attention to the valley of the Po—the larder from which the whole peninsula could be conveniently fed. The Po is not a very long river as rivers go. As a matter of fact, If you will look at the picture of the comparative length of rivers, you will notice that the Volga is the only European river that is a fit candidate for such honours. The Po, which keeps close to 45° N. lat., is only 420 miles long, but its basin area, the territory from which it draws its tributaries and which therefore comes under its direct influence, is 27,000 square miles. That is not as much as several other rivers have, but the Po has some other qualities which make it unique.

  It is navigable for nearly five-sixths of its entire length and it is one of the fastest delta-builders of the world. Every year it adds almost three-quarters of a square mile to its delta and pushes it 200 feet further outward. If it continues to do this for another ten centuries, it will have reached the opposite coast of the Istrian peninsula, and Venice will be situated on a lake, separated from the rest of the Adriatic by a dam seven miles wide.

  Part of this vast amount of sediment which the Po carries to the sea has of course sunk to the bottom of the river and has filled it up with a layer of solid substance several feet thick. In order to keep the ever-rising river from flooding the surrounding landscape, the people living along its banks had to build dikes. They began to do this in Roman times. They are still doing it. As a result, the surface of the Po is much higher than the plain through which it flows. In several villages the dikes are thirty feet high and the river runs at the same height as the roofs of the houses.

  But the Po region is famous for something else. Once upon a time, and not so very long ago geologically speaking, the entire northern plain of Italy was part of the Adriatic Sea. Those lovely Alpine gorges which are now so popular with the summer tourists were narrow bays, like the fjords, the submerged valleys of the modern Norwegian, mountains. These valleys were the outlet for the water that descended from the glaciers which then covered the greater part of Europe and of course a great deal more of the Alps than they do to-day. Glaciers get thickly covered with stones that roll down on them from the mountain slopes between which they pass on their way downward. Such fringes of rocks are called moraines. When two glaciers meet, two moraines are bound to combine into a moraine double as high as the original ones, which is then called a ‘median moraine,’ and when the glacier finally melts, it drops this rocky ballast, which is called the ‘terminal moraine.’

  These terminal moraines are a sort of geological beaver-dam; they wall off the uppermost part of the valley from the lower. As long as the glacier period lasts, there will be enough water to make the terminal moraines a negligible hindrance for the water on its downward course. But gradually, as the glaciers disappear and there is less and less water, the terminal moraine rises higher than the water and we get a lake.

  All the north Italian lakes, the Lago Maggiore, the Lago di Como and the Lago di Garda, are mainly moraine lakes. When man appeared upon the scene and began his works of irrigation, those moraine lakes acted as handy reservoirs. For in the spring, when the snow began to melt, they caught the surplus water which, if it had descended upon the valley in one solid body, would have caused the most destructive inundations. The Lago di Garda can rise twelve feet and the Lago Maggiore as much as fifteen feet and still take care of the extra water. A simple system of locks will then do the rest and tap those lakes according to necessity.

  At a very early date the inhabitants of the great Po plain began to make use of this fortunate circumstance. They connected with canals the hundreds of little streams that feed the Po. They built dams and dikes, and to-day thousands of cubic feet of water pass through these canals every few minutes.

  It was an ideal region for the growing of rice. In the year 1468 the first rice plants were introduced by a Pisa merchant and to-day the rice-terraces are a common, sight on the central plain of the Po. Other crops, corn and hemp and beet-root, were added, and the vast plain, although it has less rainfall than the rest of the Italian peninsula, is the most fertile region of the entire country.

  But not only did it provide man with food. It also looked after his wife’s garments. Early during the ninth century, the mulberry tree, which is the basic necessity for the cultivation of the silkworm, made its entrance, brought hither from China by way of Byzantium, the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived until 1453 when the Turks took its chief city, Constantinople, and turned it into the capital of their own empire. The mulberry tree found ideal living conditions in Lombardy, the plain of the Po, so called after the Lombards or Long Beards, a Teutonic tribe from the mouth of the Elbe who lived there for a long time. To-day almost half a million people are engaged in the silk industry, and their product ranks much higher than that of China and Japan, the original home of Bombyx mori, that inconspicuous little insect who provides us with the most luxurious of our wearing apparel.

  No wonder that the whole of the plain is densely populated. The original town builders, however, kept at a safe distance from the river. Their engineering technique had not yet far enough advanced to provide them with reliable dikes, and furthermore they feared the marshes, which appeared every year after the spring floods. Turin, the old residence of the house of Savoy, which now rules over the whole of Italy, and the connecting point for the passes that lead into France and Switzerland (the pass of the Mont Cenis going to France and the St Bernard pass, famous for its dogs and monastery, giving access to the valley of the Rhône), is the only city of any importance directly situated on the Po. But it is so high that it needed have no fear of drowning. As for the other cities, Milan, the capital of that region, meeting-point for five important trade-routes (the St Gotthard road, the Simplon, the small St Bernard, the Maloja and the Splügen pass), lies half-way between the river and the Alps. Verona, the end station of the Brenner pass, one of the oldest connexions between Germany and Italy, lies at the foot of the Alps themselves, Cremona, famous as the home of Stradivarius, Guarnerius, and the Araati family, the fiddle-making dynasties, lies near the Po, but Padua and Modena, Ferrara and Bologna (the home of one of the oldest universities of Europe) are all at a safe distance from that main artery upon which, they depend for their prosperity.

  The same is true of two of the most romantic cities of the ancient world, Venice and Ravenna. Venice, the town in which 157 canals, 28 miles in length, serve the purpose of streets, was originally a place of shelter for those who no longer considered themselves safe on the mainland and who preferred the discomforts of the mud banks thrown up by the Po and several smaller rivers to the dangers that followed in the wake of the barbarian invasions. Once there, these fugitives discovered that they had a mine of wealth in the salt which lay there, so to speak, for the picking. Their salt monopoly started them on the road to riches. Their straw-covered huts became marble palaces. Their fishing boats assumed the size of warships. For almost three entire centuries they were the leading colonial power of the entire civilized world and lorded it over Pope, Emperor, and Sultan with a most haughty and at the same time a most elegant air. When news of the safe return of Columbus and the discovery (the supposed discovery, of course) of the road to India reached the Rialto, their business quarter, there was a panic. All stocks and bonds dropped fifty points. For once the brokers were prophets, for Venice never recovered from
this blow. Her well-protected trade-routes became a useless investment. Lisbon and Seville succeeded her as the international store-house towards which all of Europe turned for its spices and other Asiatic and American products. Venice, gorged with gold, became the Paris of the eighteenth century. All the rich young men who cared for a genteel education and some rather less genteel entertainment went to Venice. When the carnival began to last the greater part of the year the end had come. Napoleon conquered the city with, a corporal’s squad. The canals are still there for you to admire. Another twenty years and the motor-boat will have destroyed them.

  The other city, also a product of Po mud, was Ravenna. Today it is an inland city removed from the Adriatic by six miles of mud. A dull hole, a city that must have driven such famous guests as Dante and Byron to drink and distraction. During the fifth century of our era it was more important than the New York of to-day, for it was the capital of the Roman Empire—it harboured an enormous garrison and was the main naval base of that time, with the largest wharves and timber supplies.

  In 404 the Emperor decided that Rome was no longer safe. The barbarians were getting too powerful. And so he moved to the ‘city in the sea’ where he had a much better chance to protect himself against surprise attacks. Here he and his descendants lived and ruled and loved, as you may see to this very day when you stand speechless before those incredible mosaics of that dark-eyed woman who started life as a dancing girl in the circus of Constantinople and died in an odour of sanctity as Theodora, the beloved wife of the famous Emperor Justinian.

  Then the town was conquered by the Goths and turned into the capital of their newly founded empire. Then the lagoons began to fill up. Then Venice and the Pope fought for it. Then for a while it became the home of that pathetic exile, whose services to his native city of Florence had been rewarded by a threat of being burned at the stake. He spent silent hours among those famous pine forests that surrounded the city. Then he descended into his grave. And soon afterwards the famous old imperial residence followed his example.

  One more word about northern Italy. The kingdom has no coal but it has an almost unlimited supply of water-power. This water-power was just being harnessed when the Great War broke out. The next twenty years will see a tremendous development of this cheap form of electricity. The lack of raw materials will always,remain a difficult problem. But with the proverbial industry of the average Italian citizen, his very sober mode of living, and his moderate needs, Italy will be a dangerous rival for other countries which are rich in raw material but poor in manpower.

  On the western side, the great plain of the Po is cut off from the Mediterranean by the Ligurian Alps, the connecting link between the Alps proper and the Apennines. The southern slopes of the Ligurian Alps, completely protected against the cold breezes from the north, form part of the famous Riviera, the winter playground of all Europe, or rather of that part of Europe which can afford a lengthy railway trip and fairly expensive hotels. Its chief city is Genoa, the chief port of the modern kingdom and a city of imposing marble palaces, relics of the day when Genoa was the most dangerous rival of Venice for the colonial spoils of the Near East.

  Towards the south of Genoa lies another small plain, that of the river Arno. The Arno takes its origin among the mountains about twenty-five miles north-east of Florence. It flows through the heart of that city which during the Middle Ages lay on the highroad that connected Rome, the centre of Christianity, with the rest of Europe, and which was able to use this favoured, commercial position so cleverly that ere long it became the most important banking centre of the world.. One family especially, that of the Medici, showed such brilliant gifts for that sort of work that they finally became hereditary rulers of the whole of Tuscany and were able to make their home town the most marvellous artistic centre of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

  From 1865 to 1871 Florence was the capital of the new Italian kingdom. Then it dropped slightly back in importance, but it still is one of those places that one ought to see to appreciate how beautiful life can be if money and good taste happen to be present in a well-balanced ratio.

  Near the mouth of the Arno, which flows through one of the loveliest garden spots to be found anywhere outside the island of Java, are two cities which must be mentioned. One of these is Pisa, which was first a Greek colony, then an important Etruscan city, then a great naval republic, holding sway over Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles, then the chief trade rival successively of Genoa and Florence. Its university was one of the most celebrated in medieval Europe. Pisa has a leaning tower which leans because the architects were not very careful in laying their foundations, but which proved very handy when Galileo wanted to study the habits of falling objects. The other city is Livorno, which for some curious reason we call Leghorn, and which is chiefly remembered as the town near which Shelley was drowned in the year 1822.

  From Livorno southward the old stage-coach road as well as the modern railway keep close to the seashore. They give the traveller a quick but hazy glimpse of the island of Elba (Napoleon’s place of exile until he unexpectedly reappeared in France to rush towards the final doom of Waterloo), and then enter the plain of the Tiber. This famous river, called the Tevere in Italian, is a sluggish and tawny current, vaguely reminiscent of the Chicago River but not quite so wide, and of the Spree in Berlin, but infinitely less clear. It takes its origin among those Sabine mountains where the earliest Romans went to steal their wives. In prehistoric times its mouth was only twelve miles west of Rome. Since then it has added two miles to its length, for like the Po, the Tiber is a first-rate mud-carrier. The plain of the Tiber is different from that of the Arno. It is much wider and while the Arno region is healthy and highly fertile, that of the Tiber is barren and a breeder of disease. The very word ‘malaria’ was coined here by those medieval pilgrims who were firmly convinced that the mal aria—the ‘bad air’—was responsible for those dreadful attacks of fever which burned up the body while one was still alive. In consequence of this fear, all the houses in this neighbourhood were hermetically sealed as soon as the sun had set. This system of preventative hygiene had one great disadvantage. It kept all the little mosquitoes carefully indoors, but as we only learned about the relationship between malaria and mosquitoes some thirty years ago, we can hardly blame our ancestors for that particular bit of ignorance.

  In Roman times this flat territory, the famous Campagna, was decently drained and fairly well, populated. But because it lay open and unprotected along the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea it was an ideal spot for the pirates who infested the whole of the Mediterranean as soon as the Roman policeman had disappeared. The towns were destroyed, the farms deserted, the drainage ditches neglected. Stagnant pools bred malaria mosquitoes and throughout the Middle Ages and even as late as thirty years ago, this entire region from the mouth of the Tiber to the Pontine marshes near Monte Circeo was either avoided or passed through as fast as the unfortunate horse could drag the rattling coach.

  Arises the question, Why should the most important city of the ancient world have been founded near a plague-spot? Why indeed? Rome was built where it was built, regardless of an unhealthy climate, scorching summers, chilly winters, and an absence of all decent communications. And yet it grew to be the centre of a world-wide empire, the holy shrine of a world-wide religion. Under such circumstances, don’t look for a single explanation. Look for a thousand different and inter-locking explanations. But don’t look for them here, for it would take as many as three volumes like the present one to get to the bottom of the secret.

  Nor shall I go into details about the city itself. For I am the last person in the world to do justice to the Eternal City of the eastern hemisphere. It may have been due to those rebellious ancestors of mine who from the year 50 before the birth of Christ until 1650 of our own era felt themselves in the most cordial discord with everything that emanated from Rome. I ought to have wept, standing on the Forum, and I could only see the gangsters and racketee
rs who, under the name of the generals and party leaders, despoiled all of Europe and a greater part of Africa and Asia in exchange for those roads which seem to have been their eternal excuse for much that was unspeakably cruel. I ought to have felt a sense of trembling awe before the church devoted to St Peter’s memory and martyrdom, and I could only deplore the waste of so much money upon a building that had not a single claim to either beauty or charm except that it was bigger than any other edifice constructed for a similar purpose. And I longed for the harmony of Florence and Venice—for the well-balanced proportions of Genoa. I know of course that I am particularly alone in these feelings. Petrarch, Goethe, everybody that ever amounted to something, has wept tears upon catching his or her first glimpse of Bramante’s dome. We will let it go at that, but rather than spoil your taste for a city you will some time see yourself, I duly note that Rome since the year 1871 is the capital of the kingdom of Italy and that it harbours a city within a city—the so-called Vatican City—which was surrendered to the Pope in the year 1930 and now gives the Pontiff that freedom of action which he had not enjoyed since that fateful day in September of 1870 when the troops of the Italian Kingdom entered the city and proclaimed a constitution instead of that absolute sovereignty which had been the form of Roman government until then.

  The modern city of Rome has few industries. It has some terrible-looking monuments, a main street which reminds one of Philadelphia, and many people in uniforms. The uniforms are good.

  And that brings us to another city, until recently the most populous of the entire peninsula, which is a strange mixture of geography and history and which confronts us once more with that irritating puzzle: “Why didn’t this city, enjoying every possible natural advantage, take the predominant place occupied by Rome situated in a dead alley on a mean little river?”